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Getting Started

1.1 Introduction

The aim of the zingCOBOL
is to give the basics of the COBOL programming language for anyone
who knows a little bit about computers (not much) and preferably will at
least have come across another procedural progamming language such as C, QBASIC or Pascal.
If you want to learn good structured programming then, although the basic COBOL syntax is
provided here, other sources can provide more effective guidance.

The floating Menu button can be clicked to bring up a temporary menu for navigating this site.
If your browser doesn't support this feature (or the popup window that results) there is
a table of contents at the bottom of every page to navigate with.

If you wish to find a specific item the Quick Reference page
should take you to the desired section. This tutorial is by no means extensive but the basics
should be covered here.

What's written here will
hopefully be correct (tell me otherwise) and maybe even informative.
However, I would strongly recommend buying a good book on COBOL programming, and/or have
someone teach you it.

I hope zingCOBOL will prove useful to you.

Tim RP Brown (March 2015)

.

1.2 COBOL - a brief overview

COBOL (COmmon Business
Orientated Language) has been around for yonks (since 1959),
updated in 1968, 1977 and 1985. OO COBOL was developed in the 1990's. Well
suited to business applications, i.e. used for large batch
processes running on mini-computer and mainframes (medium to large platforms).
About 65% of new critical applications use COBOL; several billion lines
of COBOL code exist throughout the world, used by over a million companies.
So it may be old but it remains one of the most important languages in
commercial use today. (source: Computer Weekly, Dec
9th, 1999).

1.3 What you'll need

The best way to learn to
programme/learn a new language is to actually be able to write code and
run it on a computer. Consequently, you really need a computer (probably
a PC), a text editor (Notepad or WordPad will do) to write the code into,
and most importantly, a COBOL compiler which will check your code and then
convert it into something the computer can understand and execute. I use
the Fujitsu COBOL85 ver3.0 compiler which can be downloaded for free (see the Links
page).

If you want to download a simple program for added/refreshing line numbers, go to the Links page.

A brief description of how to compile a program using Fujitsu COBOL85 version 3.0 can be read here

1.2 COBOL - a brief overview
COBOL (COmmon Business Orientated Language) has been around for yonks (since 1959), updated in 1968, 1977 and 1985. OO COBOL was developed in the 1990's. Well suited to business applications, i.e. used for large batch processes running on mini-computer and mainframes (medium to large platforms). About 65% of new critical applications use COBOL; several billion lines of COBOL code exist throughout the world, used by over a million companies. So it may be old but it remains one of the most important languages in commercial use today. (source: Computer Weekly, Dec 9th, 1999).
1.3 What you'll need
The best way to learn to programme/learn a new language is to actually be able to write code and run it on a computer. Consequently, you really need a computer (probably a PC), a text editor (Notepad or WordPad will do) to write the code into, and most importantly, a COBOL compiler which will check your code and then convert it into something the computer can understand and execute. I use the Fujitsu COBOL85 ver3.0 compiler which can be downloaded for free (see the Links page).
If you want to download a simple program for added/refreshing line numbers, go to the Links page.
A brief description of how to compile a program using Fujitsu COBOL85 version 3.0 can be read here
.

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